$300k ‘breakup fee’ a fortune? Chinese woman said ‘not enough’ & left it at bar

A woman left a suitcase filled with 2 million yuan ($315,000) in banknotes behind in a bar because the “break-up fee” offered by her former boyfriend was a few million shy of what she thought she deserved.

Workers at the bar in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China say they discovered the suitcase as they were closing for the night in the early hours of Monday. It opened while being moved to a storage area and bundles of cash were exposed, Xinhua reports.

The bar staff contacted the police who took the suitcase to a nearby station and counted all the money, discovering that it amounted to 2 million yuan.

About an hour later a young man arrived at the station, accompanied by his former girlfriend, and explained that the suitcase belonged to him and he had given it to his girlfriend as a break-up fee. In China break-up fees are seen as a form of compensation when romantic relationships dissolve.

“I told her I only had 2 million yuan with me, and then I left,” the young man said. When police asked the woman about the incident, she reportedly told them that she called the man to tell him she’d left it behind. “I didn’t take the money… I told him to get it himself. That was it,” the woman said. Another Chinese news outlet BJ News says the woman actually asked for 10 million yuan ($1.58 million).

The police officers were gobsmacked by the tale and urged the young man, who is reportedly from a wealthy family that’s heavily involved in the IT industry, to be more careful with his money. “Is 2 million yuan a lot? I just wanted to give it to my girlfriend to break up with her, that’s all,” he replied.